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The Best Writing Advice I Ever Got was from a Geologist
The best writing advice I ever received—although I could not have known it at the time—was given to me by a geologist some forty-five years ago. His name was Bruce. In itself, it doesn’t surprise me that his advice was so good; Bruce in particular, and geologists generally are pretty clever people. I am sort of surprised, though, that I can remember the actual words, and surprised when I reflect on how far-reaching those words have been, in my geological career, in my writing career, and in many other endeavors I’ve tackled in the nearly half-century since.
Red Dirt, Black Dirt, and American Political Perspective
Not an hour ago and twice through, I listened to Emmylou Harris’s Red Dirt Girl. I’ve always loved the song, it sometimes makes me cry, and I recommend it highly. But this time it got me thinking about dirt and, unavoidably, politics. Dirt because that is the compelling descriptor of the tragic heroine of the song, and politics because it has just been a crazy week, month, and couple of years in the stupid tussle between liberals and conservatives. I am on one side of the tug-o-war, and most of you know which side. But a lot of people I love and respect are on the other side. And so, I don’t want to be vehement in this essay. It’ll be, “Just the facts…” —and some observations and an opinion or two not forcefully presented— “…ma’am.”
Champagne, Underwear, and Pandemic Death as agents of Intellectual Growth in Western Civilization
Where Fiction and Geology Join
I was asked the other day what inspires me to write and, like most (maybe all) emergent writers, I faked my way through an answer I thought my audience wanted to hear. It was some drivel about the human desire to exceed the corporeal whatever, and maybe a little about my need to record the essence and not just the facts of my existence. Yada yada.
As I reflect on the same question now, free from third-party pressure for immediate and profound insight, I believe I write for the same reasons, to the same ends, and applying the same principles that drove and guided me in my years as a geologist.